


Frosted Veins

by malignantmandrake



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Snow, Snow and Ice, Snowfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:11:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignantmandrake/pseuds/malignantmandrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sad little drabble about Albin and Angel, my and my friend's OCs, and how one of them copes with the loss of a loved one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frosted Veins

It was the first snowfall of the year.

Albin sat barefoot on his front porch, toes sunken into the icy fluff. It was cold, of course it was, but it didn't really bother him. It was sort of comforting to feel the chill, actually. His toes had started to turn puple and his hands were shivering, but it didn't matter. He'd sit out here all night, not doing anything, not even thinking. He'd let his eyelids lull and let his vision fog up, spacing out as the abyss of snow seemed to suck the consciousness right out of him.

The snow never fell softly at first- there was always a wicked storm that blew through, and, as time passed through winter, it calmed, eventually thinning out into nothingness when spring came through. Albin enjoyed the repetitiveness of the season, the way it blew through every year. It was something he could depend on, something normal that he knew he could expect. Once a year, every year. It had been that way for the past... the past decade and a half at least, he supposed.

When he'd initially moved into the house, he'd hated it. The shack, he refused to even call it a house, was poorly insulated and creaky- the electricity was alright at least, it only gave out during the winter storms. He rarely watched television or did anything that required power other than his nightly reading though, so that wasn't much of a counterbalance against the insulation.

His angel, the man he'd moved in with, the man who had convinced him to come to this god-forsaken little place, would hold him when it got cold. They would get under the covers, wrap themselves in blankets and simply lay there and talk for hours when the storm first blew in. They did it every year. His angel would nip at his ear and squeeze his sides, tickling him and drawing small yelps from Albin’s resistant lips. He woud get cranky and try and roll away, but his angel would always move to hold him again.

The cuddling never really helped the warmth, to be quite honest. Albin had made that quite clear on multiple occasions. It was simply too cold- the both of them barely had enough body heat for themselves, but being held felt nice despite the chill. The cold would slip underneath their blankets, through the walls and into their very bodies in any way it could. They breathed the cold in, they smelled it, felt it... hell, if you counted the wind and snow, they could even hear and see it. Every sense they had was full of the cold all winter, every winter.

Albin hated it for the first couple years. After a while though, it became dependable, a routine. Even things he hated to the core, things he didn't think he could hate any more than he already did, they held at least a speck of joy for him when they became routine. Albin was the type of guy that liked to know how things were going to go; what he was going to have for breakfast, what he was going to read that night, how far he would walk, what days he went into the nearest town (which was, by the way, a good hour's trip both ways) for food, everything. Perhaps that was why his angel had always been so appealing. Opposites attract, and they were certainly opposites. The only routine Albin’s angel seemed to partake in was shattering his own, he forced him from his comfort zones all the time. It made him angry and it put him on edge, but maybe he liked that. It incited emotion- it reminded him that he could feel more than just the cold.

It came on the first snowfall of the year. It drew out a bit of anger from Albin, as this wasn't how things were supposed to go. His angel was supposed to nip at his ear and cuddle with him, and tickle him until he couldn't breathe. He couldn't help it though, his angel would be able to do that soon enough.

His angel's skin wasn't the pallid red of a windwhipped, freezing body. Instead, it had mutated, morphed into the angry red of a rebelling body. It almost seemed as if he'd had some violent allergy to the cold, the winter itself drawing a reaction from his body. His angel had always looked frail, but he was never helpless, he wasn't supposed to be like this. Albin wanted to yell, but what would yelling do? He couldn't scream the heat from his angel's forehead, he couldn't hit the bile that rose and pushed itself from his angel's lips. All he could do was wait it out.

The storm lifted- the sickness didn't. The cold was no longer the allergy, the cold was the cure. The cold had held his sickness at bay, the cold numbed his pain. The cold wasn't the enemy- it never had been. The cold brought them to bed, the cold told his angel to curl up in bed with him, and, most of all, the cold held them together.

As the temperature rose, so did Albin's emotions. He lost his calm self, he worried what he might find each time he called out that he had returned and received no immediate response. He wanted to leave, to get away from this awful place as if it had been the source of his angel’s troubles, but the other wouldn't have it. He wanted to stay; if the warmth was going to take him, he was going to be taken from the home he loved, not from some strange room, hooked up to a thousand machines that beeped and panged and didn't allow him the silence to hear his lover's breath when they laid together.

Albin couldn't yell after a certain time, he'd lost the voice and will to yell. He'd lost the want, knowing it would have no effect. He spoke softly, he touched softly. His angel was becoming fragile, the warmth was stealing him away. A yell too loud might break him, Albin feared. It sounded crazy, and maybe it was. Albin couldn't help his fears though, not on his own.

His angel left before the first snowfall of the year. The heat stole him away only days before, and the cold, try as it might, didn't have the chance to heal and mend what the heat had melted. Albin didn't cry in front of his angel, he didn't want his lover to see him sad. Instead, he ventured into the forest when his angel had left him and cried into the dirt, letting his tears fall into the ground. He found the will to scream again, his angel no longer there to steal the sound from him, the heat no longer imparting fear. His screams still did nothing, but he beated the sounds into the air regardless, letting out cries that not a soul would hear.

His tears froze with the first snowfall of the year, his angel's body likely doing the same beneath the dirt of the shack's front porch. The blankets were dirtied as Albin sat on the first step, digging his toes into the snow as he forced a smile onto his lips, one similar to the smile his angel had made sure his body had stilled with. The cold brought nothing but comfort this year, to his surprise, comfort that his angel was still with him. The cold no longer beat against his body or snuck unwanted into his blankets, it sat with him and held him in mourning, reminding him that his angel's influence and imprint would never leave him, all the heat in the world couldn't change that.

From the first snowfall of the year until the last day of winter, Albin was with his angel every season, still wrapped in the blankets and feeling the cold of his angel nip at his ears as he always had, letting the cold of his angel's hands sneak up his sides and hold him tight.


End file.
